UNIVERSITIES must resist politicised Muslim groups seeking special treatment on campus, a commentator has warned.

Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatric registrar and a graduate of the University of Sydney, said it was now clear that British universities had inadvertently lent support to the growth of home-grown radicalism by giving in to this kind of campus pressure.

"(These groups) are very assertive, very quick to cry racism, they've taken advantage of the impression among some academics that they're a marginalised, victimised minority,'' Dr Ahmed said.

On Monday he will address the first national conference on Muslim university students, being held at the University of Western Sydney ...

Dr Ahmed said another pattern was for these Mulsim groups and leftists to ally themselves.

"I remember going to a protest (in Sydney during the recent Hezbollah-Israel conflict in Lebanon) and seeing environmental groups going Allah Akhbar (God is great) in harmony with some Lebanese groups,'' Dr Ahmend said ...

There should be an immediate major reform and reshaping of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs:

(1) Formally recognise that this Department is now as integral to our national security as the Defence Department, ASIO and the armed forces, and begin to staff it accordingly, including with respect to security checks ...

Mr Garrotte added that it was natural for the host country to integrate endlessly to any immigrant group and its religion. “I think the ideal would be for all citizens as an example, to spend one week being like Muslim Arabs, then the following as tribal Africans, then say Animist Laplanders and so on. In this way the entire country could over a continuously rotating twelve month period, get through all ethnic identities while avoiding the now discredited idea of having a cohesive culture of our own”.

Garrotte then cheekily added with a laugh, “While I’m against the atom, I’m all for the atomisation of society!”

He continued that only “right wing racists, Neo cons and other fascists” still believed that the West had ever offered anything of worth. “Pick any third world or Islamic basket case, and they’re all superior to any Western country with it’s shallow and meaningless achievements of enormous economic triumphs, functioning democracies, scientific innovation, incredible freedoms, artistic expression and the full enjoyment of life. You call that living? Look, even if for arguments sake, Islam had some ‘sinister goal’, and it doesn’t, wouldn’t the answer be to just keep on being ever more tolerant?” ...

Last year, former Tory minister George Walden wrote a book about the future of life in Britain and why record numbers were emigrating. Taking the form of a letter from a father to his son, it provoked a massive, positive response from readers when it was serialised in the Daily Mail.

In the book, Guy and Catherine despaired at having to bring up their two children in an area that had been dramatically changed by mass immigration, where their children had become a minority in school and teachers struggled to deal with so many pupils who did not speak English ...

Since then, the couple have given up the battle and moved abroad to Canada ...

Walden observes that despite all the changes mass immigration has brought in Britain, there remains a conspiracy of silence that has stifled debate on one of the most important issues of our age.

Now, in this thought-provoking followup, Walden examines Guy and Catherine's new quality of life, using it as a mirror to reflect the dreadful state of Britain today.

Walden, who served as higher education minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, has been married to Sarah for 38 years and they have three grown-up children. The son to whom his letters are addressed is fictional, but the incidents affecting him and his wife are based on fact.

Dear Son,

It's getting on for ten months now since you and Catherine left for a new life in Canada. And we didn't get the impression, when we came to see you, that you've regretted your decision for a moment.

... it looks as though you got out just in time. Driving close to your old place in West London the other day, I saw a police notice asking for information about a young man who'd brandished a gun at an officer.

There is an atmosphere of suppressed - or outright - violence and disorder that makes me worry for the next generation ...

Often, it's the little incidents that are telling. Yesterday, your mother was on a bus when three girls aged between 16 and 18 tried to board in Ladbroke Grove ... The bus was held up for 20 minutes while the girls blocked the doors, laughing and screaming obscenities in their newly-acquired Essex accents.

The point is that during all this little drama, not a single one of the weary rush-hour passengers said a word. The great British public held hostage by a trio of sozzled teenage girls!

Toronto sounds safer, though it seems a hell of a way to go for a little peace of mind ...

Here, the country is not so much disintegrating as disaggregating. The Balkanisation of our lives is happening on a national scale.

Scotland's falling off the top, self-sealing ethnic communities are proliferating in the Midlands, and London's got its own thing going at the bottom.

We boast of our prosperity, but it's fragile and concentrated in the South East - an island within our island. Perhaps we'll have to get used to thinking of London and its environs as a kind of Hong Kong or an Italian city state ...

Imagine my astonishment when the Minister responsible, Liam Byrne, actually admitted recently that large-scale immigration has profoundly unsettled the country - and that it's the poorest communities that have suffered the most. The influx was overwhelming public services, schools, the NHS and housing, he said ...

Politics or parenting, schools or Scotland, wherever you look, very little seems to be holding things together. People live side by side yet separately, in mental isolation, with their eyes fixed warily on one another.

When communities, races, classes and families become segregated to the degree they have, feelings of social solidarity erode.

Society ends up like a shattered windscreen: holding together by the grace of God, even though it's all cracked to hell, so no one can see ahead or have any idea where they are going.

Love to all, Dad

Adapted from Time to Emigrate? Letters From A Father by George Walden, published by Gibson Square.

"Why write a book called “Time to Emigrate?” Because I’ve got three grown-up children, the book is about the future, and the future of life in London looks increasingly risky and pessimistic for millions of middle class families from teachers, nurses to taxi drivers that the only secure option is to emigrate. This is a book for my children and their children.

Compared to young families today my generation had it easy. I began life on an estate in Dagenham, a place you wouldn’t recognise now. There were no racial tensions in my day. I’m not opposed to some immigration, and know how we can all benefit. But what we’ve done is a massive gamble. Trevor Phillips says that if we don’t talk about the problems of integration honestly the tensions out there will increase. He’s right - but if you do, someone will call you a racist. For the sake of a bit of honesty I'm ready to risk it ..."

THE Office of National Assessments recently produced a report that came up with some startling statistics. One was that if present trends continue, France will be a majority Muslim country by 2050. Most Dutch cities will be majority Muslim by that year.

If present trends continue is, of course, a big if. In this case it requires that the respective levels of French Muslim and non-Muslim fertility be maintained, and the level of Muslim immigration. It may be that as French Muslims become more affluent they have fewer children; almost certainly the levels of Muslim immigration will decline. Nonetheless, the Muslim presence throughout Europe will grow and grow.

Now, let's couple that with the remarks of Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's closest adviser and one of the most brilliant political operators in US history, on his retirement this week. Rovesaid the war on terror would "shape the new century".

Most Muslims, of course, and certainly most French Muslims, do not support terrorism. But the evidence is abundant that a substantial minority of many Muslim populations support a similar, extremist, paranoid, conspiracy-laden view of the world as do the terrorists.

Our age, I suspect, is going to be characterised by three great strategic issues: the war on terror or, if you like, the fate of Islam; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and the rise of India and China.

Each of these issues is immensely complex and each is more complicated because of the dynamic of globalisation. Moreover, it is the way these three issues interact with each other that is most difficult to understand and respond to.

Consider this potential chain of interaction ...

More: the AustralianErr, Greg, did you just gloss over the loss of France and the Netherlands and move onto the global after-effects? You might have mentioned the likely fate of the non-muslims left stranded there before you started worrying about everyone else. Or, gee, maybe how they could even stop the takeover from happening? Wouldn't that be in their interest and ours? Let me spell it out for your: P-R-O-A-C-T-I-V-E. It beats crystal-ball gazing and the liberal last-minute-Larry line of defence any day.

Nah, you'll hold onto that liberal non-discriminatory principle come hell or high water. Why? Why? Why? I don't get it. Lose your country. Allow the Islamic threat to rise. Why? I don't get it. Convenience or conviction? You don't sound very convincing Greg. Things only evolve if you fail to take preemptive action.

Conceived as a secular Muslim state, it has become a cauldron of violent extremism. Forget Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan; the most dangerous country in the word today is Pakistan.

Its regime is weak and under intensifying pressure. Many of its most powerful political and military leaders sympathize with Islamic radicalism. Most significant, it is a nuclear power. Imagine a Taliban-like movement with state power and armed with atomic weapons. The world may be facing that prospect in Pakistan ...

Pakistan could still have become a stable democracy. That was the dream of its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. His legacy, though, has been all but wiped away. Photos of him that hang in every government office are a cruel mockery. Today's Pakistan is the incarnation of everything Jinnah detested.

Jinnah's ambition was akin to that of another hugely ambitious nation-builder, Kemal Ataturk. He wanted to create in Pakistan what Ataturk had begun to build in Turkey: a modern, open, post-Enlightenment state in which Islam would guide private behavior but not public policy.

Jinnah's death in 1948 - and the assassination of his closest comrade, prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan, three years later - killed that dream. Perhaps the same would have happened in Turkey if Ataturk had died soon after taking over leadership of his new state, instead of ruling it for a decade and a half.

Over the decades that followed, Pakistan fell under the rule of military officers. The longest-running of them, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977, proclaimed two goals: building a nuclear bomb and creating a "genuine Islamic order" in Pakistan. He introduced an Islamic Shari a legal code, filled the ranks of the army and intelligence service with officers sympathetic to Islamic radicalism, and encouraged the growth of religious schools where children were inculcated with fanaticism ...

Whether Musharraf survives his current crises politically - or physically - will not determine Pakistan's future. It is bleak. This is the world's next great crisis.

It will be Asian-born voters and not doctors' wives who decide the fate of the PM's electorate ...

The characteristic that separates Sydney inner-metropolitan electorates between Labor and Liberal is not income, or even property prices, but race. The dividing line is an ethnic mix of roughly 20 per cent of the population. Any seat with more than 20 per cent of its voters born in non-English speaking countries at the 2006 census has a Labor sitting member today with one exception - Bennelong.

It was the only seat in the nation's top 20 by ethnic diversity to return aLiberal MP at the last election ...

When he became prime minister in 1996, the Asian-born made up 13.7 per cent of Bennelong. By 2001, the percentage had jumped to 18.4 per cent. On present trends, that figure will be approaching 25 per cent by the time the election is run later this year ...

This trend is also obvious in Melbourne. If you were to compare a map showing Labor seats and areas of the highest concentration of migrants there would be a remarkable overlap ...

So is the Liberal Party taking stock of the situation and slowing down immigration to preserve its long-term viability? Not at all. It's doing the very opposite. The current Government has almost doubled immigration over the last ten years to about 180,000 per year.

JOHN HOWARD's former chief of staff has issued a blunt warning of a US-style voter backlash against the Federal Government, driven by union-stoked fears about globalisation.

... Arthur Sinodinos told a gathering of industry chieftains in Canberra yesterday that ... Australians were increasingly worried about their prospects in the global economy ...

"There is no doubt that globalisation is putting real political pressure on the system today," he said ...

"The debate we're having in Australia today - if you strip away the headline issues of housing, cost of living and the like [and] the role of Work Choices - they're coming down to how people are coping in this more globalised workplace, what security or insecurity they feel in the workplace and how sensitive they are to even small changes in their particular circumstances. They feel more at risk."

Mr Sinodinos said the main reason for the loss of Republican seats during the US mid-term congressional election was not a backlash against the President, George Bush, or the invasion of Iraq, but a highly successful fear campaign run by the trade unions about job losses resulting from globalisation ...

A member of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia shouts "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great).

Nearly 90,000 followers of a hardline Muslim group have packed a stadium in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, calling for the creation of an Islamic state and thunderously chanting "Allah is great!".

Hizb ut-Tarhir, a Sunni organisation with an estimated one million members, is banned in some Asian and Arab countries, but drew supporters from Europe, Africa and the Middle East to Indonesia for a meeting of the group that is held every two years.

Speeches called for the return of the caliphate, or Islamic statehood, across the Muslim world. The crowd, divided into sections for women and men, roared in support.

"We need to carry this message from every corner from the east to west, so that on judgment day we can be proud," said Salim Frederick of Hizb ut-Tarhir's English branch ...

Indonesian Muslim youth from the hard-line Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir wave black and white flags with the religious writing that reads 'There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet' ...

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a transnational Sunni group that says it shuns violence, but it has been outlawed or restricted in Germany , Russia and parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. The British government said it planned to ban the group after the July 2005 London bombings, although it has not yet happened.

Muhammad Ismail Yusanto, the group's Indonesian spokesman, said on the sidelines of the meeting that the group rejects democracy, because sovereignty is in the hands of Allah, not the people.

In a statement, he called secularism "the mother of all destruction," and he called on all Muslims to join the struggle to implement Islam and Islamic law.

Most of those attending were said to be Indonesians, although supporters of the group also came from the Middle East, Africa and Europe ...

In an opinion survey earlier this year of attitudes in four key Muslim countries -- Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and Indonesia -- University of Maryland pollsters found 36 percent of respondents "strongly" in favor of "unify[ing] all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate."

Scholars say a caliphate has not existed in any form since 1924, when Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk formerly abolished the institution, following the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I ...

Hizb ut-Tahrir was founded in 1953 by a Palestinian Arab and works openly -- except in those countries where it is proscribed -- for the revival of the caliphate. Even regimes like the one ruling Saudi Arabia are not sufficiently Islamic for the group.

"It can, in no way, be claimed that any of the current Muslim countries are representative of Islam and the Islamic system of government which is the Islamic [caliphate]," it group says on a website.

Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesmen insist it does not promote violence, but experts regard it as dangerous.

Heritage Foundation scholar Ariel Cohen has described it as "a clandestine, cadre-operated, radical Islamist political organization" that is "transnational, secretive, and extremist in its anti-Americanism."

"Like al-Qaeda, it [Hizb ut-Tahrir] advocates an Islamic Caliphate in which [Islamic law] will be supreme, but says it wants to achieve it through peaceful mass agitations and not by resort to terrorism or other acts of armed violence," according to South Asian political and security analyst Bahukutumbi Raman. "What the al-Qaeda seeks to propagate through jihadi terrorism, it propagates through political means."

"[Hizb ut-Tahrir ] is not a terrorist organization, but it can usefully be thought of as a conveyor belt for terrorists," Zeyno Baran, director of the Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute, wrote in 2005. "It indoctrinates individuals with radical ideology, priming them for recruitment by more extreme organizations where they can take part in actual operations."

MUSLIM activists seeking the revival of Islamic world leadership turned a conference on caliphate here yesterday into a platform for their call for the implementation of shariyah and for a united fight against secularism.

... they are "calling on all Muslims, leaders of organisations, scholars, students, military and police members to earnestly implement Islam and its shariyah (and to) struggle or support the struggle to establish it".

"We are calling (for) the fight against secularism (because it is) the mother of all destruction, and for a stop to all filthy practices such as corruption, the spread of porn through the media," according to Ismail Yusanto, the spokesperson of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia. "We are also calling on the Muslims to stand up and (be) united to establish shariyah, revive the Khilafah Islamiyyah 'ala Minhajin Nubuwwah (the Islamic caliphate based on the Prophetic tradition) that will bring a blessing for the universe and restore izzul Islam was Muslimin (the dignity of Islam and Muslim.)" ...

"Intellectually, the Muslim ummah is facing poisons such as secularism, liberalism, pluralism" he said. "The Muslim community also suffers from one setback after the other and we are witnessing how our brethren in Palestine continue to languish, much the way our brothers suffer in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, Jammu Kashmir, Thailand and the Philippines."

By all evidence, "the Muslim ummah is indeed suffering from backwardness," Ismail said, quoting a hadith in which the Prophet described the suffering of the Muslim ummah on the hand of their enemies because of their own affliction known as al-wahn (a love for the world while fearing death overly.) Khilafah is the remedy for this situation, he said ...

Despite a national consensus that a democratic system of government is the best solution for Indonesia, an Islamist group says democracy is one of the main reasons why the country is lagging behind others.

"Democracy only brings us secular policies, like what's happening nowadays," he told reporters, while referring to secularism as being against sharia ...

Ismail said the establishment of an Islamic caliphate would help solve this country's problems and increase development.

Official statistics show that currently 39 million Indonesians live in poverty and 22 million people are unemployed.

Millions of children also suffer from malnutrition and are unable to continue at school, Ismail added.

According to Ismail, the establishment of the caliphate would mark the application of sharia in all aspects of life and the reunification of Muslim countries all over the world.

The concept of implementing sharia in Indonesia is not new. During the constitutional debates of 1945, a clause on sharia was briefly incorporated into the constitution, but was then quickly dropped from the draft ...

One of the biggest stories in recent times is due to shortly hit the British media. This follows the unprecedented decision of Mohammad Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Govan since 1997, to stand down before the next elections, following threats upon both his and his children’s lives.

... A by-line here, a by-line there, but virtually unreported on television news stations.

The reason for this media blackout is very simple. It is not the National Front, Combat 18 or the BNP who have issued the recent death threats, it is local Muslims themselves, incensed by what they see as his treacherous behaviour in relation to the murder of Kriss Donald, a white Glaswegian, in 2004 ...

Kriss Donald, a slightly built, 15-year-old schoolboy was abducted from the streets of Pollockshields, Glasgow, on March 14, 2004. His kidnappers were five British Muslims of Pakistani descent, intent on exacting retribution on a white male - any white male would do - following a fight in a night club the previous weekend. Kriss was driven around for several hours whilst he was held down and tortured in the back of the car. He was eventually taken to an area of waste ground where he was finished off. Before he died, it is alleged that he was castrated, burned with cigarettes; his eyes were gouged out and he was stabbed repeatedly. Once on the waste ground he was doused with gasoline and set alight whilst still alive. He crawled a few metres and then, mercifully, died. A walker who discovered his body the following morning was unaware that it was even human, remarking, that at first, he thought it was the carcass of an animal.

Two men were subsequently arrested, but the other three; aware the police knew their identities, fled to Pakistan. The Foreign Office at that time was involved in delicate negotiations with Pakistan over the extradition rights concerning full-blown terrorists, so an unimportant little murder such as Kriss Donald’s was simply a fly in the ointment they did not need. As a result, they did their best to frustrate attempts by the British police to retrieve their suspects.

Enter Mr Mohammad Sarwar, a man with a clearer sense of right and wrong, and a political position with which to do something about it. Mr Sarwar was instrumental in forcing the British government to press ahead with the extradition of the three men, and thus, in the eyes of some British Muslims, committed a crime of such magnitude that only his death could adequately compensate for his treachery.

“Life is not the same since I brought them back … I received threats to my life, to murder my sons, to murder my grandchildren … I was told they wanted to punish my family and make a horrible example of my son… they would do to him what they did to Kriss Donald.”

There were other firsts in the story that should have interested the media. Daamish Zahid, one of the five killers, was the first person in Scotland to be convicted of racially motivated murder, whilst the sheer brutality of the murder itself was unprecedented in Britain. (An issue all too predictably rectified a year later by six black British men who gang raped, tortured and murdered Mary Ann Leneghan.) ...

When Britain, a first world country, loses a democratically elected politician because he fears for his life, we are entering a wholly new era. Britain is now an Iraq, a Zimbabwe, we are becoming, in political terms, a genuine third world country, and our BBC led media, showing a total disregard for impartiality, has veered from mere bias to dangerous censorship, with all the disturbing implications this portends for our democratic future.

Many political commentators believe that Britain is dead, Lawrence Auster in particular, but he also thinks it can be resurrected. If this is to happen it must happen soon. Our national heart has ceased to beat, our national soul is hovering indecisively above the operating table, the crash team have been called but the politically inclined hospital switchboard have told them there is no problem, that everything is under control. The life support boys have heard otherwise, they are hurrying to get there but other hospital staff members have switched the signage to the operating theatre and killed the lights. It is a big hospital, they only have minutes to get there, they are lost, confused, misinformed, and the clock is relentlessly ticking, and ticking, and ticking…..

WHITES are now in the minority in nearly one in 10 US counties because of immigration and a higher birth rate among blacks and Hispanics.

And the increased diversity is straining race relations and sparking a backlash against immigrants in many communities with complaints that many refuse to embrace the local culture.

"There's some culture shock," said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based research agency. "But I think there is a momentum building, and it is going to continue."

As of 2006, non-Hispanic whites made up less than half the population in 303 of the nation's 3141 counties, according to latest census bureau figures. Non-Hispanic whites were a minority in 262 counties in 2000, up from 183 in 1990 ...

Many of the US's biggest counties have long had large minority populations. But that diversity is now spreading to the suburbs and beyond, causing resentment in some areas.

Many Latinos say they see it in the debate over illegal immigration.

In northern Virginia, Teresita Jacinto said she feels less welcome today than when she first arrived 30 years ago, when she was one of few Hispanics in the area.

"Not only are we feeling less welcome, we are feeling threatened," said Ms Jacinto, a teacher in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Woodbridge is part of Prince William County, which recently passed a resolution seeking to deny public services to illegal immigrants.

Similar measures have been approved or considered in dozens of communities across the US. In all, state MPs have introduced more than 1400 measures related to immigration this year, the National Conference of State Legislatures says.

Supporters say local laws are necessary because Congress has failed to crack down on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. But many Hispanics legally in the US say they feel targeted, too ...

Nationally, the number of minorities topped 100 million for the first time in 2006 — about a third of the population. By 2050, minorities will account for half of US residents, according to bureau projections ...

Fortuyn, 54, was attacked as he left a radio studio in the central Dutch city of Hilversum. He was shot six times and suffered multiple wounds in the head, chest and neck, and died shortly afterwards ...

Eyewitnesses say a single gunman shot Fortuyn as he got into a chauffeur-driven limousine in the media park where the radio station is located.

Television reporter Dave Abspoel said four people chased the gunman, who apparently fired in their direction ...

She said that the Dutch media and politicians have reacted with shock to an attack which is unprecedented in Dutch politics ...

In an interview last week, Fortuyn expressed fears that he could be the victim of an attack and said that he had received threats by phone, e-mail and letter.

A few weeks ago, protesters threw two cream pies laced with urine in his face.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Dutch maverick politician PimFortuyn was a colourful figure in what many voters complained was a bland political landscape in the Netherlands.

The 54-year-old courted controversy with his robust style, being blunt, outspoken and flamboyant, an approach formerly unseen in Dutch politics.

The former Marxist, sociology lecturer and newspaper columnist stood out with his shaven-head and bright, colourful ties and was also conspicuous travelling around in a car with blacked-out windows.

Proudly homosexual, he spoke out against immigration and high taxation and accused the Dutch government of poor performance.

He also described Islam as a "backward culture" in his book, Against the Islamicisation of Our Culture.

He attracted a wide following, but was shot dead just nine days before a scheduled May 15 election in which opinion polls had forecast his newly-formed LijstPimFortuyn party, which won a stunning 35 percent in local elections in Rotterdam in March, would get between 25 and 28 seats in the 150-member parliament, at the expense of the socialists.

In November last year he became leader of the Leefbaar (livable) Nederland party. He guided the party to the right, but in February he was expelled after criticising Muslims in the newspaper De Volkskrant, and suggesting an article in the Dutch constitution banning discrimination should be changed.

Although Fortuyn was part of a new wave of Dutch politicians and often perceived as an extremist, he insisted he was not like Jean-Marie Le Pen and wanted nothing to do with the French far-right leader.

He was at pains to point out that he was not against immigrants, but he questioned their ability to assimilate into a liberal and racially tolerant culture and argued immigration had to be curbed in order for the Netherlands' liberal social values to survive.

"My policies are multi-ethnic and certainly not racist," he said. "I want to stop the influx of new immigrants. This way, we can give those who are already here the opportunity to fully integrate into our society."

In a recent interview, he argued: "In Holland, homosexuality is treated the same way as heterosexuality. In what Islamic country does this happen?"

Fortuyn's platform seemed out of place in the ultra-liberal Netherlands, which he argued was full up with 16 million people.

While not advocating deportation, he criticised the country's estimated 800,000 Muslims for not embracing Dutch life and said government benefits should be restricted to Dutch speakers.

Though tolerant of such subcultures, Fortuyn targeted a deep vein of suspicion of immigrants and also blamed them for a rising crime wave.

"It's not very smart to make the problems bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don't assimilate. This country is bursting. I think 16 million people is quite enough."

Fortuyn also cautioned about the expansion of the European Union to include Eastern European countries, and lamented the loss of Dutch national identity within the EU.

A left-wing activist has confessed in court to the Netherlands' first political assassination in 400 years, saying he shot the maverick PimFortuyn to defend Dutch Muslims from persecution.

Volkert van derGraaf, 33, a vegan animal rights activist, said on Thursday that he alone was responsible for killing the flamboyant gay protest leader last May, days before elections in which the Fortuyn List party vaulted into second place and shattered the Netherlands' consensus.

Facing a raucous court on the first day of his murder trial, he said his goal was to stop Mr Fortuyn exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" to try to gain political power. He said: "He was an ever growing danger who would affect many people in society. I saw it as a danger. I hoped that I could solve it myself."

... a former Marxist professor who mixed left-wing and right-wing ideas.

Mr Fortuyn, a shaven-headed cigar chomper who used to sweep across Rotterdam in a chauffer-driven Daimler with two King Charles spaniels, relished mocking political correctness, but rarely ventured into the animal rights dispute.

His chief hates were militant imams who condoned violence against women and the persecution of gays and lesbians. He said the emergence of big Muslim ghettoes in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague resisting assimilation threatened the Netherlands' liberal society and national cohesion.

His murder stunned the country. Thousands lined up outside the Rotterdam Stadhuis to sign a condolence book.

"I don't hate Islam. I consider it a backward culture. I have travelled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it's just terrible. All the hypocrisy. It's a bit like those old Reformed Protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have norms and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them. You also see that in that Muslim culture. Then look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that's possible. That's something that one can be proud of. And I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much."

How many articles have we read over the last few years telling us that, as a result of the murders of Pym Fortuyn and Theo van Vogh and the death threats against Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the attitude of the Dutch toward their Muslim immigrant population had changed from acceptance and tolerance to alarm and wary-eyed skepticism--a change registered not only in public opinion but in official policy? Yet now the Dutch integration minister, Ella Vogelaar, tells a newspaper that Muslim immigrants must feel appreciated and that the Dutch have to help "Islam take root in the Netherlands." Has the spark of resistance been extinguished, and Netherlands placed back on the unobstructed path to Islamization? ...

Olivier writes from the Netherlands:

The first is that the Dutch people are still very much liberal. Many moan and complain about the ever increasing presence of Islam, yet uphold their liberal principles in a fatalistic manner: "I don't like it, but there is nothing we can do about it." While they loathe Islamic reality, many still believe in the possibility of a moderate, "European" Islam. These people are to be found in the entire political spectrum.

The second is that Geert Wilders, who represents the hard right in the present situation, is indeed a bit of a clown, with his bleached hair and blunt rhetoric. His main thrust is on Islam and immigration, which makes him look one-dimensional. These things do not add to the respectability of the right ...

At present, even as the attitude towards Islam is very negative, past and present multicultural reality, or what is perceived so, makes it hard for the average Dutchman to embrace a more traditional view on things. Add to that the temptations and riches of modernity, the firm grasp of progressive ideology, and we still have a long way to go.

Err, maybe that's because there is no driver. All the bureaucrats have this shared belief that globalisation is going somewhere better, but is anybody actually driving apart from China, India, etc? Go on, stuff-up another industry.

"While America dithered, and still does, in Iraq, China established economic colonies everywhere, from New York to Belize to West Africa to Italy, and is steadily driving whatever local competition remained, from the silk manufacturers of Como to the makers of pottery in Mexico, into non-existence -- while the Administration keeps singing the praises of "free trade" and Nafta, as the free-market fundamentalists they are."

It was just outside the pub that we passed them. Three women in full burqas, with only the eyes showing.

Now, they were kinda swishy, blue burqas, about as stylish as it's possible to be, when you're wearing a two-man tent with a peephole, but it set off one of my old buds, Rachel, the hardest charging, most stupidly fearless of all my surf grrrl crew.

Long story short, Rachel has as many issues with the burqa as she does with, say, rapists. For her it's like the dark ages reached out down the years and smacked her in the face. Being confronted with a phalanx of burqas leaves her feeling little different to being confronted by a wall full of Penthouse or Hustler centrefolds. It's all about oppressing the chicks and it sends her into an insensate rage ...

So you can imagine how this scene played out.

There wasn't a lot of tolerance.

It made me think though. This is a debate you don't see very often. For a country that's raised such a healthy crop of arse-kicking feminists they seem kinda quiet on the position of women within the Muslim community ...

Me? I'm afraid I'm mostly with Rachel. I don't simply see the burqa as a jolly piece of ethnic costuming. Yeah, I can pay it as an individual statement of faith, but I also see it as a tool of oppression, something that goes well beyond an individual's choice - assuming of course they have a real choice in whether or not to wear it.

To be flippant for a moment - because, you know, I so rarely am - it's worth comparing the meaning of the burqa with the meaning of one of post modern do-me feminism's iconographic artefacts, the FMB.

There's nothing submissive about a woman donning FMBs. It is a loud and very public statement of her existence as a sexual being, but it is not an invitation to every drunken real estate salesman at the bar to feel her up, and it is most definitely not a rebuke to any other woman who chooses to wear, for instance, a sensible pair of comfortable hush puppies. The FMB is an individual choice of apparel that contains no message or meaning for anyone but the wearer and at the very most, the person or peeps she wore it for.

I'm willing to stand corrected, and doubtless will be in furious tones, but there seems inherent within the burqa an admonition to all women who do not wear it. To don the burqa is not a fashion statement. It's many things, but foremost amongst them there seems to be a moral component, a statement that women's very bodies are such powerful sexual totems that they must be hidden away, because men are ethically weak and frail and prey to animal urges they cannot possibly be expected to contain. This was the core of Hilaly's cat meat argument, a pathetic excuse that's had no standing as a defence against charges of sexual harassment or worse for a long time now. At least not in the modern world ...

My sentiments about the burqa exactly. Full marks for raising the issue and questioning the silence. But then, strangely, he says in the comments ...

JB: Well put Dennis, and to clarify, I specifically DONT support a burqa ban.and ...

JB: In fact I've known plenty of mod Muslims. Lived with a couple over the years. Muslim chicks that is. Not particularly observant, in that they liked a drink and a root, but they identified as the big M anyway, and the thing I love about our country is that it protects their right to do so, while drinking and rooting up a storm.

There's that liberal attitude again. One wonders where he will draw the line with creeping Islamisation: if not the burqa, then what?

... Since the early 1990s, identifying Islamist sympathizers in the armed forces has become one of the primary objectives of Turkish military intelligence. Although the expelled officers are usually accused of Islamist “activities,” suspected intent rather than action is usually sufficient to ensure their expulsion. The expelled officers are rarely allowed access to the evidence gathered against them and, under Article 125 of the Turkish Constitution; there is no right of appeal against the Supreme Military Council (YAS) decisions. Expelled officers automatically lose all their pension rights and frequently have difficulty finding alternative employment.

Introducing the right of appeal against YAS decisions is one of several constitutional amendments currently being considered by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Although they signed the latest YAS decision, both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul noted their objections to the lack of a right of appeal ... Nevertheless, the Turkish General Staff (TGS) has opposed the introduction of a right of appeal, arguing that it would force the military to disclose classified information.

Until relatively recently, the TGS’s primary fear was infiltration by supporters of the Islamic preacher Fetullah Gulen, who is currently in exile in the United States. Gulen’s supporters in Turkey currently control a vast network of businesses, schools, charitable foundations, and media outlets. The movement was an outspoken supporter of the AK Party in the run up to the July 22 general election ... However, in recent years the TGS has also become concerned by the activities of the Naqshabandi Sufi brotherhood, which is one of the oldest and largest orders in Turkey. Although all Sufi brotherhoods are theoretically illegal in Turkey, in recent years they have begun to operate increasingly openly. In conversation with this Jamestown correspondent, leading Naqshabandis freely admit to trying to cultivate serving members of the military, although they insist that they are solely concerned with the officers’ spiritual well-being and have no ambitions either to influence the internal workings of the TGS or erode its traditional rigorous commitment to the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish constitution.

Nevertheless, an officer’s attitude toward religion has now become one of the main criteria for promotion ...

ISTANBUL: Turkey's secular military expelled 10 officers for being reactionary — a euphemism for religious activities — along with 13 others accused of lack of discipline, a military official said Sunday.

The military, which has historically shielded Turkey's secular character, ousted the 10 officers for "reactionary activities," the official said speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

The phrase "reactionary activities," is a common way for many Turks to refer to alleged ties to religious groups or a religious agenda seen as a threat to the nation's secularist tradition.

It was the first time the Higher Military Council had disclosed the number of those expelled on this specific allegation. In the past, it only released the total number of dismissed officers and gave no details on the reason for the expulsions, daily Milliyet newspaper said.

Daily Zaman newspaper, known for its religious readership, reported that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul had signed the council decision but that they disagreed with it ...

The military has expelled hundreds of officers for alleged ties to leftist or Islamist groups since 1996.

Sounds like the army is getting edgy in Turkey. That is now their last line of defence against Islamists. Meanwhile in dumb-ass Australia we have calls for hijabs in the Reserves:

Young Muslims urged to enlist

May, 2007

YOUNG Australian Muslim women will be targeted to join the Army Reserve and prove they are part of the national security "solution".

The plan by Sydney Muslim leader Jamal Rifi - which has been welcomed by the Australian Defence Force - is designed to break down barriers between Islam and mainstream Australia. It also aims to revive an element of Islamic culture that saw men and women fighting "side by side" during the days of the prophet Mohammed.

Dr Rifi, president of Lakemba Sports and Recreation Club in Sydney's southwest, said he wanted "hijab-wearing" women between the ages of 17 and 26 to become reservists and would soon begin promoting the idea to Muslim parents on Arabic and Islamic radio networks to urge them to let their kids join.

"I will be encouraging Arab-speaking Australians to join overall, but I will concentrate mainly on the Muslim community," he told The Australian yesterday.

... we now know the consequences for every single European society which has admitted large numbers of Muslims: social alienation, religious antagonism and outright terrorism.

We know this. We all know it. And yet we continue to allow Muslim immigration. Why? What do we gain from it?

Well, up until two weeks ago you might have said, more doctors ... we all accepted that doctors, no matter their religion, were dedicated to saving life.

That was then. We know otherwise now ... the term WMD has taken on a new and grisly resonance for some Muslim doctors. Which ones? We don't know. Okay: so why take the risk?

... the Dail has never debated the effects of Christian, European population-movement into Ireland, never mind the consequences of Islamic immigration. This is frivolousness to the point of delinquency, the hallmark of a society which has neither faith in its own values, nor a determination for them to endure. And a society which does not defend its core-certainties is sooner or later doomed. Much of Europe is so afflicted, and Britain is in an advanced stage of the disease.

Islamic norms are now tolerated, and informally enforced, across many British cities, where women routinely wear full face-veils ...

"Immigrants are good for a society," goes the brainless parrot-cry of Irish dogmatic advocates. Sometimes, sometimes, but not always ...

Enough. So what advantage do we derive from allowing Muslims into Ireland, rather than Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Parsis, Jains or even Christians? What rational justification is there for enlarging our Islamic population? What is it? Go on, what is it?

Here is a fine example of that "different breed" of Muslim, the Aussie-Turk. KurandaSeyit gleefully rubs his hands together as he waves goodbye to secular Turkey:

"Last Sunday's election signifies a new era in Turkish politics. An Islamist party has been given a mandate to bring the country into the 21st century with zeal. How will Turkey's secularists take this slap in the face? Has democracy dealt a cruel blow to those who have used it in an attempt to diminish the influence of Islam in Turkey?"

Oui! Dr Liza Hopkins, where is that "fierce historic commitment to national secularism"? He said "into the 21st century with zeal" - he's giving "backwards" secularists the finger! OK, maybe I misinterpreted, let's read on ...

"MustafaKemal Ataturk modernised Turkey in the early 20th century and in doing so embedded a republican system that was espoused by his followers as perfect and unchangeable. However, life is impermanent and change is inevitable."

Whoa there! What's going on Liza? "Life is impermanent and change is inevitable". He's giving the finger again to "historic commitment". Where did that come from?

"The secular Kemalists are holding on to a memory and in their short-sightedness are unwilling to accept the demands of modernity."

Help! Liza! I don't understand?? Seyit is pissing on your words.

"This election must mark the change that is necessary to make the Turkish political system tenable in this century and competitive with those of the robust democracies of Europe."

Liza, make him stop! He's gonna say those four words, I know it: "global community of believers". Don't say it, Seyit!

"It has been argued that one of the longest-standing Muslim self-definitions is through belonging to a global community of believers. But for members of Australia’s Turkish community ... whose Muslim identity is subordinate to national, cultural and ethnic affiliations - networks of family and friends based around shared language, history, culture and descent override the importance of religion that is attributed to them by outsiders ..."

(sniff) I trusted you Liza. Dis-a-ppointed!

"The West and other nations must realise that it is better to work with such a change than against it."

Make him stop! He's gonna sell out Australia just like Turkey.

But wait, there's more ... here is Seyit's "subordinate" view of Christmas:

"it's time for Australia to fall in line with the UK, where councils have renamed Christmas as 'Winterval' . Australia is now so diverse with so many cultures, we need to acknowledge the need to be inclusive of our identity.''

Oh Liza, how could you? The media stereotype was right after all: he wants Islam to take over the world.

Kuranda Seyit is a Turkish-Australian who is executive director of the Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations.

"Since Kemal Ataturk, the Turks have believed they could become a modern state like the Europeans if they became secular and separated religion and state," Mohamad Mahathir told me when he was still prime minister of Malaysia.

"This strategy is not convincing to Muslims, who, after all, are believers. If you say that modernization means secularization, then it will be rejected in the Islamic world."

How the Turkish crisis is settled, and the impact it has on the rest of the Muslim world, if any, is the biggest test of relations between Islam and the West since 9/11. God willing, secularism will survive democracy in Turkey and Muslims elsewhere will realize the value of both.

Sydney Morning Herald, August, 2007James Button (the Herald's European correspondent, based in London)

"Change will come, even if Turkey shows that not all cultures modernise in the Western way. This vibrant country also shows the world that while militant Islam is a great force, the rise of women is greater. There are good reasons to believe the latter will prevail."

I looked for those reasons, but all I could find was:

"You see all kinds of veil, or headscarf, in Turkey. Last week I saw a woman in a black veil and tight jeans, another in a wildly multi-coloured veil and high heels and another wearing pink veil and make-up to match ...

Yes, there are also women in black, wearing a shapeless overgarment with only a small part of the face showing. But the kaleidoscope I saw challenged all my preconceptions. ...

Although almost entirely Muslim, Turkey is the fiercest opponent of Muslim symbols such as the scarf. The paradox goes back to the determination of Ataturk ...

But here is another paradox: among these apparently religious Muslims are some of the strongest feminists. They are young women whose parents moved to the cities in Turkey's huge postwar urbanisation ...

Mahcupyan, whose foundation has studied the "scarf girls", says it is their "passport out of the family". It allows them to stay out late and tell parents they cannot be misbehaving: they are religious, after all. It also frees them from male harassment.

"It's a very modern garment, even a feminist statement," Mahcupyan says. The wearer "is trying to differentiate herself, first from her family, then from society. She is saying, 'I'm a person, I have my own career, and this is my choice."'

Q: How many paradoxes does it take to change a light bulb?A: As many as it takes for the light bulb to implode with confusion.

Keep pumpin out those paradoxes James. After all, the alliance of liberals and Islam is the mother-of-all paradoxes. But keep stirring Dr Jekyll and the chemistry will start to become crystal clear: "oops, all the liberalism dissolved, and I'm just left with Islam".

Personally, I look forward to the day when Turkish women are beating their husbands into submission. Then you should send Germaine Greer over for some lessons to take back to the UK to give those honour killing males a good whuppin.

Not unreasonably, Andrews decided to cancel Haneef's work visa and he has said he would not issue another.

"I genuinely believe this bloke has got real suspicions about him and his activities and his associations," he said yesterday. "I'm going to protect Australia and Australians first. So far as I'm concerned, his visa is cancelled and that's that."

Under the Act, the Minister has that discretion and in this matter he has acted both legally and correctly.

It's called leadership. It's in short supply in the ALP and obviously an alien concept to Haneef's supporters who gathered at Griffith University.

THE new president of the World Bank, Bob Zoellick, has said it is "absolutely critical" that South Pacific nations be able to send guest workers to Australia.

New Zealand has adopted such a scheme and the ALP is prepared to explore the idea, but the Prime Minister, John Howard, has ruled it out.

In Sydney yesterday, Mr Zoellick told the Herald in an interview: "Labour mobility is absolutely critical to the long-term development of the South Pacific.

"I don't know about Australia's visa and immigration rules but labour mobility will be important for remittances and skills" for South Pacific countries ...

Mr Zoellick said that failing states "are dangerous to their neighbours". He nominated Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Cambodia as fragile states: "And frankly the development community has struggled with how to deal with these countries," he said.